There was a fig tree growing in Jerusalem that from all outward appearances looked like a perfectly good tree. Its main attractiveness was a beautiful covering of leaves. It probably looked like a tree most of us would be proud to have growing on our property.

Jesus saw this fig tree from a distance one morning as He entered the outskirts of Jerusalem. He had stayed the night in Bethany and was on His way back to cleanse the temple, which He had examined the day before. He was hungry as He approached the tree, but He found nothing on it except leaves. Then the Lord spoke to the tree and said, "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever" (Mark 11:14). And the tree died instantly!

The disciples heard what He said to the fig tree and marveled at how soon it withered away. The next morning, as they passed by it again, they saw the tree had not only withered leaves, but it was dried up from the roots! (Mark 11:20) Why was Jesus so hard on this tree? What did He see about it that was so bad?

This tree was not fruitful as it appeared to be. (If fruit is not on a fig tree when the leaves open, no fruit will be borne.) The Bible often uses a physical example to reveal a spiritual truth. Even though Jesus was in the world at that time with a physical body, His hunger is a picture of the hunger of our Father in Heaven. God is a Spirit (John 4:24); He does not hunger for a physical kind of fruit, but rather for the fruit of the Spirit. God desires our love; that is what He hungers for! He hungers, not for the kind of love that we produce but rather, for the love that the Holy Spirit has placed within us.

Jesus was not deceived by the beautiful covering of leaves on the fig tree. He could see right into its inner core and knew that tree would never produce fruit.

We can understand more about what our Lord saw in the barren fig tree through one of His parables. Jesus said, "A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shall cut it down" (Luke 13:6-9).

The owner of the vineyard in this parable is symbolic of the Lord. The fruitless fig tree was something that was not supposed to be there. How did that useless, barren thing get planted in God's garden? Surely, it was not the work of the Lord! The dresser of the vineyard represents us. The parable is a picture of the Lord saying to us, "There is something that looks good to the natural man growing within you that is a fruitless, lifeless thing and should be cast out of My vineyard!" With the freedom of choice we have, we do not say, "So be it Lord; take that awful thing out of my life!" No, this is more like what we say: "Oh Lord, please . . . don't take this out of my life. Let me work on it for another year; then it will become fruitful!"

The Great Physician wants us to choose to let Him cut a deadly thing out of our lives, and we continue to want to feed it to make it grow. We insist on fertilizing it, not for just another year--as the worker in the parable wanted to do--but for a lifetime.

The lesson for us to learn from the parable of the barren fig tree is: DON'T DUNG IT! In other words, stop trying to work to grow fruit in the Lord's garden! That area is a spiritual place; it is holy ground--God's turf! It does not belong to us; it belongs to Him! He purchased it with the sacrifice of His Son on the cross of Calvary! It is absolutely absurd for us to try to bring our work into God's garden. That is like trying to cultivate a withered, dried-up-from-the-roots tree that is under a divine curse!

Our own expertise is not needed in the Lord's vineyard. Our human intellect has a problem of not being able to discern fruit of the flesh from fruit of the Spirit. Man has developed an amazing ability to create artificial garden products that appear to have life in them, but the Spirit of God cannot be deceived.

Jesus said, "Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up" (Mat.15:13), and "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away" (John 15:2). This does not mean that a born again Christian can be unborn and lose his salvation; that if he sins or becomes unfruitful after he is saved, his Heavenly Father will cast him out of His family. That is such an impossibility that there should be no need to even discuss it. To say that a born again Christian could be cast into hell is to call God a liar!

Jesus has promised that every single plant He owns will never be destroyed. He said, "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:37), and "I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand" (John 10:28, 29).

You who have received Jesus as Savior should never worry or ever even think of your Heavenly Father casting you away; your salvation is eternal! However, there may be some branches in your life that need to go--those things that are not acceptable in God's garden because they cannot produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

One big unfruitful branch in your life may be trying to work for God rather than letting Him do His work through you, or being determined to make the old natural man--who has been crucified with Christ on the cross--bear spiritual fruit, rather than letting the Holy Spirit bring forth His fruit through the new creation that you became the moment you received Christ.

Often, when we observe that our spiritual lives are not growing and producing God's kind of love, joy, peace and patience, we panic and rush to human counsel. There we receive instructions on how to work harder to become more fruitful. The advice sounds good, but can yield nothing more than the barren fig tree.

Jesus is called "Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace" (Isa.9:6). He is the One to seek for counsel. And this is what He says to all who want to work to become fruitful: "Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these" (Luke 12:27). Does that mean we can stop working, stop worrying, stop performing to bear fruit, and be like the lily by simply growing in the place where God has planted us? You bet it does! And, if we look to the cross, we will know that God has planted us deeply in His love!

That is the place to be and that is the place to stay. The Bible tells us to keep ourselves in the love of God (Jude 21), to abide in Christ and let His words abide in us (John 15:7), which is an easy and delightful thing to do if we are listening to the Holy Spirit to learn the true nature of God. But if we allow the devil to deceive us by giving us a false concept of God, we will want to run and hide from our Heavenly Father. And that is no way to become fruitful.

Satan deceived Eve into believing a false concept of God. She actually believed that God was a liar and that the devil spoke the truth! (Gen.3:4) After he deceived her, it was easy for him to tempt her to eat from the tree that the Lord God had warned was the tree of death. That tree, like the barren fig tree, also had a good outward appearance. It was pleasant to the eyes, a tree to be desired to make one wise in a way that would make men be as gods, capable of doing things without depending on the Living God--being able to work to produce their own kind of fruit! The New Age Movement is not so new. People wanting to exclude God and produce something divine from within themselves goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden!

It was the leaves from a fig tree that Adam and Eve sewed together to cover their nakedness as they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord (Gen.3:8). Working to be fruitful is really trying to produce a righteousness of our own, rather than resting in the finished work of Christ on the cross. They covered themselves with fig leaves; we do the same. The "fig leaves" we hide behind are our works that make us appear to be more spiritual.

The natural man does not appreciate being told that all his hard work is not acceptable as an offering for his righteousness. Cain was a tiller of the ground. He brought forth the fruit of his labor for an offering to the Lord, and God rejected it; while Abel was a shepherd and brought a lamb for an offering, and God accepted that. Abel's offering represents "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). Cain's is a picture of man offering his work as a substitute for the work of God, which is the sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross of Calvary. We can see how the natural man reacts when he learns that all his working to become righteous is rejected by God by looking at how angry Cain became when God would not accept his offering (Gen.4:5).

It is shocking, it really hurts the ego, to learn that when we work to become more fruitful to God, we are only dunging that dried up, cursed fig tree. Yet, to have that revelation can bring us into a place where our lives will abundantly bear fruit to the glory of God!

Jesus said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman (gardener)" (John 15:1). And what a wonderful Gardener He is! He takes His garden work very seriously. This garden was ordained by God from before the foundation of the world, even before the beginning of time. Every individual plant in it gets His undivided attention. God is committed to His garden; He has given His complete love to it. He views it as the best of all of His marvelous creation.

What I am referring to is not the earth's vegetation that He created on the third day (Gen.1:11,12), nor the magnificent Garden of Eden that He created for the first man and woman (Gen.2:8); I am speaking about the garden God has made for Himself!

Scripture clearly reveals that priceless garden that has captured the love of God. It is YOU! The Bible says, "YE ARE GOD'S GARDEN!" (1Cor.3:9) Yes YOU! Oh, if you only knew how much God loves you . . . you would never, ever be the same. Your life would flourish "like a green olive tree in the house of the Lord" (Ps.52:8).

How does one's life become a garden of the Lord? Not by any work of man, that is for sure! It is only by the mighty work of the Holy Spirit!

Jesus said to His disciples, "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest" (Mat.9:37, 38). Notice, it is "His Harvest"! It does not belong to man; it belongs to God! There is nothing accomplished in the garden of the Lord by man; it is all done by the mighty hand of our Heavenly Father. Don't ever thank anyone other than God for your salvation or for your spiritual growth, because He is the Gardener of your life!

Oh, I suppose it is alright to thank a faithful messenger for delivering a message as long as he knows he is just a delivery boy. God does use people to spread the glorious gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but He also uses all creation and all circumstances to bring forth life in His garden. He will move Heaven and earth to bring the gospel message to a single person so that precious soul may be saved and securely planted in His eternal Garden of Life.

It is a tragedy when a messenger delivers the wrong message, or gets bogged down in a religious system, or burns himself out from running on emotion rather than faith; but his failure will not terminate the work of the Lord. Life goes on. The Seed will still be sown and watered; the message will still go forth. When one messenger fails, the Lord will simply use another, and it doesn't have to be a human being. Those mighty angels do not just hang out in Heaven; they are assigned to work in the Garden of God!

The Lord's garden differs greatly from a natural one. God's harvest does not come at the end of the growing season, but rather at the beginning. His harvest is when the Holy Spirit brings forth life from the Good Seed that has been sown upon the right soil and a new plant is born into the Kingdom of God. In a natural garden, harvest time is when the fruit is ripe. In the Lord's Garden of Life, harvest is the conception of the plant. Then there should be an unending yield of fruit produced by the Holy Spirit to the glory of our Heavenly Father.

Also, the Lord's fruit differs greatly from natural fruit. His fruit does not grow; it is already full grown, complete and perfect. His fruit does not grow in you; you grow in it. His love does not grow in you; you grow in His love.

It is the same with His joy. The Bible says, ". . . for the joy of the Lord is your strength" (Neh.8:10). What is the joy of the Lord? It is YOU! YOU ARE HIS JOY! Your strength comes from knowing that He is joyful that you belong to Him! "The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing" (Zeph.3:17). Imagine . . . the Lord has such joy over you that it causes Him to sing. Now, if that doesn't strengthen your heart, nothing will!

Somehow the mentality of the world is influencing the precious plants in the garden of God. Many are behaving like anxious Martha, feverishly laboring to produce fruit (Luke 10:40). Imagine, trying to produce fruit that is already grown! Few are like peaceful Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to His every word and growing in His incredible love (verse 39). Some plants have left their First Love to labor in their own self-producing garden of flesh.

Jesus taught in parables in order to hide things from those who are not willing to learn, and to reveal truth to all who have ears to hear. Many Christians have found a shallow type of happiness in keeping so busy in what they view as the Lord's work that they will not stop dunging the fruitless fig tree long enough to listen to what the Master is saying to them through the parable. Others will listen to the parable of the fig tree and will be shocked to the very core of their being when they learn that they have been working for years, fertilizing something that is unfruitful in the eyes of God. But even that can be turned into a great learning experience if one, after learning, is willing to stop toiling and spinning and grow like the lily.

Most of us have been taught from childhood that it is beneficial to be a hard worker. This has caused some to prosper and others to become self righteous workaholics. Work is a great blessing only if it is not misdirected.

There are dedicated servants of the Lord who are working hard but producing the wrong kind of fruit--the fruit of the flesh. They don't realize what they are doing because it appears to be good. Some well-meaning evangelists, pastors, Bible teachers and other dear saints who want to serve the Lord and do what is right will be devastated by the revelation of the parable of the barren fig tree.

They have instructed new and old believers alike to be more fruitful by saying to them, "Be sure to go to church every week, you must read your Bible every day, and don't forget to pray, get out there and witness, start a Bible study in your home and invite all your neighbors to it ..." It sounds so good. Nevertheless, it is only dunging the barren fig tree! Doing those things is not wrong; it is right to do them--but only as the Lord leads! It is enough for the evangelist to preach the gospel and simply instruct believers to stay close to Jesus, listen to His voice, and do what He personally tells them.

I will always remember a phone conversation I had with a man who was telling me about a ministry he and another brother in Christ had formed. He gave up a business to go full time in this ministry. What they did was to hold regular meetings in different places with other men who were new believers in the Lord, instructing them on how to be better fathers, better husbands, and so on. This sounded great to me, and I said, "Boy, that is sure needed; keep up the good work." But as soon as I hung up the phone, the Lord spoke to my heart and I heard the words, "That's evil!" Then I realized that what these men should have been teaching was more about Jesus and encouraging the new believers just to stay planted in the love of God. I was calling evil good! I was commending a do-it-yourself gardening program. I needed to learn a lesson from the barren fig tree!

Please don't misunderstand me; I do believe there is much work for us to do in the service of the Lord. We just need to find out what it is before we launch out to do it. We can learn quickly by asking the Owner of the vineyard what work He wants us to do.

People asked Jesus, "What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?" and He answered, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent" (John 6:28, 29). Our first and foremost works are always in the area of believing in Christ. The Bible tells us, "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God" and that we should "labour therefore to enter into that rest" (Heb.4:9,11). Laboring to enter into rest is a good work. That is where we should be planted--in His rest, letting our roots go deep into Christ while enjoying all the wonderful care of the Divine Gardener.

It upsets the toilers and the spinners when they see a child of God resting in the finished work of Christ. They will say, "YOU LAZY LILY!" But the Heavenly Father says, "YOU TREE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, THAT I HAVE PLANTED, THAT I MIGHT BE GLORIFIED!" (Isa.61:3).